


reach for the dead

by Elendraug



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel Powers (Supernatural), Angel Wings, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sastiel Creations Challenge, Season/Series 15, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Stanford Era (Supernatural), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21957238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elendraug/pseuds/Elendraug
Summary: and it's me they're looking forand it's me, I will never survivebut we'll be around so longand it's gonna be alright
Relationships: Castiel & Jack Kline, Castiel & Jack Kline & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Sam Winchester, Jack Kline & Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester (referenced), Sam Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	reach for the dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyShadowphyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShadowphyre/gifts).



> happy sastiel! I love how this turned out and I had so much fun being your secret santa, I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> I love coldplay, and while going through your work I saw you wrote a series based on "yellow" so that helped me pick some old and new tracks to write to... and then I wound up looping boards of canada to further set the mood, haha
> 
> please be aware there are references to canonical character deaths and some spoilers for season 15
> 
> shout-out to andrew hussie for forever changing how I view storytelling
> 
> thank you fox for beta reading ♥
> 
> ♫ boards of canada - [reach for the dead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTg-q6Drt0)  
> ♫ coldplay - [brothers & sisters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-lX6hUJPjc) | [church](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK2vs9Tokng) | [easy to please](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA7I106OEPk)

Sam sits sheltered at twenty-two [beneath an oak](https://cdnw.nickpic.host/sFZCbF.png) gnarled by its storied existence, leafing through a well-worn LSAT prep book that shows its stress in the split of its spine. Mid-October is pleasant in Palo Alto, just above sixty at the onset of the sun’s descent, quarter to six on a Saturday.

Long latticework of shadows cast from the satellite’s superstructure obscure the dark impression of tattered wings as Castiel arrives, a wavelength carried on cosmic wind from fifteen years in a future that will never now belong to this particular Sam Winchester. He stands in silhouette, his trenchcoat just shy of touching the trunk, branches unfolding in fractals behind him, twigs seeking out space with gradual growth like pinfeathers.

“Sam,” he says, so as not to startle him.

Sam looks up, his hair falling away from his face as he tilts his head back, hands braced on the book braced on his crossed legs. “I’ve been staring at this for too long.”

“You have, but you’re not imagining me.” The golden glow of sunset halos his head, disrupted by the presence of the oak transverse, and Cas kneels down into the darkness to encircle Sam within what’s left of his wings. The joggers and hikers have largely cleared out, and anyone witnessing the faint radiance gracing the crown of Sam’s skull could easily dismiss the effect as a trick of the light, just as much as the traces of the near-ultrasonic noise could plausibly emanate from [the Dish](https://dish.stanford.edu/). “Be not afraid.”

He laughs, then, a bright moment that almost hurts to hear within its larger context, of which he’ll never be aware if the events stay stable. “Are you an angel?” Sam surmises, shutting the study guide at last, with one smooth motion from both hands, simultaneously. “Only an angel would say something like that, that specifically. Halloween came early, huh?”

“The Halloween you were to have will not come to pass. Not anymore.”

“I was supposed to go to a party, but sure, if you say so.” He rests the book on the grassy hill, relaxes into the soothing wisps of celestial energy that ease the discomfort of what he doesn’t yet recognize as the early outreach of extra-sensory perception germinating somewhere between gods and grey matter, spanning the gap of Cartesian dualism as it takes up a taproot in his brainstem. “I shouldn’t be surprised that I nodded off out here, honestly. It’s been a while since I’ve had a lucid dream. Too much stress with this courseload.”

“It may comfort you to think this is a dream, but I assure you it's real.” Castiel is careful not to touch him, maintaining the canopy of his remaining feathers high enough to become a bulwark against interlopers but not to barricade Sam’s option to exit. “And you’re correct. I am an angel.” 

Sam extends his fingertips upward to reach for a rachis, manifested as translucent and half-formed but not hollow, not here. He stops himself before his skin can make contact with the vane, and folds his fingers back in towards his palm, a loose fist with no propensity for a violent outlet. The words fall from his mouth as his hand falls to his side. “I knew, somehow.”

Castiel studies Sam’s neck from behind, where his hair is too short to cover the spot just behind his jaw, where in another lifetime Gadreel’s grace nearly took Sam’s life with it as Cas withdrew it from the strained arch of his throat. He stops, as he did then, and waits.

“I knew angels were watching over me.” He rests his hand on the book cover, a scant distance away from the patch of pink-purple flowers he’s been admiring as much as he’s been avoiding injuring himself on their spines. They’re milk thistle, holy thistle, _Mary’s_ thistle, and they’re considered invasive; Sam wants to consider them for their potential to help more than hurt, for the vibrant color they’ve brought into view, if he just uses caution around them. “I wanted to believe it.”

“I can confirm there are angels in your outfield,” Cas says, and then adds with a faint change of tone Sam can’t quite place, “and even home base.”

There’s a pause before Sam catches himself smiling at the voice of a being whose face he’s barely seen. “Is that a joke?”

“Somewhat. The pop culture reference shouldn’t diminish the validity of the statement.” He settles back on his heels, lets his focus linger on Sam’s fingertips tapping the study guide, and finds relief in his hand staying within the realm of human law.

Sam looks back over his shoulder before anyone can condemn him for doing so, with no interest in throwing salt over it nor finding himself pillared in place. “What _would_ be a joke, then?”

It’s been fifteen of the longest years of his angelic life, but seeing Sam’s face without the exhaustion of enduring hell held within his eyes makes Castiel feel far older, wearier, more committed than ever.

He returns the smile. “An angel and a demon walk into a bar exam.”

Sam pats the prep book, then twists his body sufficiently to relieve the awkward angle of his cervical vertebrae. “Hope they studied.”

“An angel and a demon walk onto the BART,” Castiel tries again, as he positions his knees in parallel, to the side, to allow Sam additional space to be seated. “The joke is the absurdity of the scenario. Public transit would not often be necessary if teleportation was available.”

“It’s just BART,” Sam corrects him. “Without the definite article.”

“Ah.”

“I don’t want to be a jerk, but why did you come to me?” He rotates himself completely, takes in the trenchcoat and the tired eyes, all of this a bit too earthbound to parse as supernatural, if not for the glimmer of plumage hovering above him at reduced opacity. “I’m guessing it wasn’t to try out a standup routine.”

“If anyone would have that honor, it would’ve been Uriel.” Castiel’s tone leaves it unclear whether this too is a joke. “You’re correct again, however. Unfortunately, I’m with you as a messenger of destruction.”

Sam’s expression moves through myriad reactions, but he settles upon academic inquiry. “The destruction of what?”

“Just destruction.” He rests his hands on his own knees, palms up, open and inviting but eschewing any expectations. “Without the definite article.”

There’s hardly hesitation before Sam places his hands over Castiel’s, palms touching before sliding his fingers back to curl down as Cas curls up, loosely interlocked. He chews his lip and looks back up, afraid but steadied by his faith. “Well, I promise not to shoot you.”

Castiel lets out a short huff of voluntary breath, his mind’s eye envisioning the sense memory of rock salt’s accidental impact upon this human body from a recent eternity ago. The gentle weight of Sam’s hands on his somehow hurts far more. “That’s courteous.”

“I try to be. Least I can do.” There’s a half-chuckle, a quick exhale, downplaying himself in the habitual way he does. He nods and sets his jaw. “Whatever you have to tell me, I’m listening.”

But Sam—the cumulative, collective Greater Sam Winchester—has vastly exceeded what anyone in heaven or earth or otherwise could ever ask of him, and that’s the exact issue.

“Ours is a story of entropy,” Castiel begins, soldier turned storyteller, eternally grasping for the right way to imbue human language with meaning too broad to be contained within mark making and glottal stops. “Things fall apart. I'm trying to set a few of them back in place, ideally outside of the chessboard.”

“What can I do to help?” Sam asks, and his face falls within seconds of Castiel’s.

“I know you want to help, but you need to opt out. Just this once.” Castiel straightens his back, sore from keeping his wings aloft through scar tissue, where crucial components were seared-off both six years ago and eight years from now. He closes his eyes, squeezes Sam’s hands tightly, and captures the emotional momentum to deliver news that can be considered ‘good’ only in its prevention. He opens his eyes before speaking. “I’m here because you’re a very powerful vessel.”

Sam feels Castiel’s fingernails pressing into his palms, unaware that the keratin hasn’t formed normally since he abandoned Pontiac, Illinois in what was and what should never be a specific timeline unfurling in 2009. “A vessel for what?”

There’s no way around it, no sugar to coat it; there’s no use for fructose from Eden, anyway. “A vessel for Lucifer.”

Sam jolts, but doesn’t let go. “You’re shitting me.”

Castiel shakes his head, and would let go if Sam wanted it. “I shit you not.”

“You’re right, this isn’t a dream,” he laughs, stifled, darker than the response before his recovery had been disrupted. “This is a nightmare.”

“It doesn’t have to be. It can stop here.” Cas allows intensity into his intonation. “We— _you_ can stop it here.”

Sam looks away, and Castiel can see his mandible at work beneath his muscle, beneath his epidermis. He takes in the sight of him, tendons and tissue, occipital lobe and organelles, the microbes comprising the mechanical workings of Sam Winchester. And at the base of it all, beating through him like a time bomb: a payload of demon blood, present past any duration typically allotted to individual erythrocytes.

“Sam, you can stop this right now.” He repeats it, more quietly; there’s no call for cacophony. There’s a method to it, to repurpose the phrasing, and he treads forward with care, quoting before segueing into sentences of his own construction. “God did this to you, Sam. Just because he created us doesn't mean he can toy with us, like playthings. You can give yourself justice for what horrors would’ve come to pass, peace of mind knowing they’ll remain in the realm of _what if_.”

Cas can see the process of respiration, of alveoli at work within his lungs. Cortisol makes itself known elsewhere, and his metatarsals flex along with his phalanges within his Chucks. He wants to give Sam new shoes in which to walk away from this, to reject the namesake once and for all.

Maybe Red Wings, to flee permanently from ever setting foot within Detroit.

“So you’re warning me about Lucifer, but also about God?” Sam scoffs, clicks his tongue, the sounds of organic data processing. The scope is staggering. “If everything’s corrupt, who am I supposed to rely on?”

“Yourself.” Castiel brushes the pad of his right thumb over Sam’s knuckle on his left pinky finger, then repeats it on the other side to balance out their personal microcosm. “Jess. You have a good heart; Azazel can’t change that.”

At last Sam looks back to his face, furrows his brow as he struggles to place the name. “What should I do?” 

Castiel floods his own pupils with starlight, backlit by grace, blue-white and burning in a localized binary system, bright as Eta Carinae, this energy departing heaven’s altar. He holds Sam’s hands softly; he speaks firmly. 

“Never say yes to an angel.”

Sam’s pupils constrict, and he inhales to calm himself, O2 binding to hemoglobin while Castiel watches the movement of molecules. He doesn’t pull back.

“Then how can I say yes to you?” he asks, catching the caveat, well suited for pre-law. “How can I trust your guidance?”

“You can’t.” Cas lets the light fade from his eyes, and with the sun’s descent behind the radio telescope, it will take Sam’s vision a while to readjust. “You have to trust yourself.”

“But—”

A hand comes to rest upon his left shoulder, sinister only by way of technicality, and he doesn’t have to look up for long. There’s no cause for concern, surreal as it may be, and Sam knows in an instant, implicitly, that the weight of this conversation will swiftly be augmented further by its gravity.

Sam Winchester kneels beside himself, seated across from an angel of no lord whatsoever, and wills reassurance into the touch of his fingertips over cloth over structure not yet tethered to the fabric of space-time, not so literally nor literarily. His own chest aches, his shoulder eaten, escharotic, collapsed into the singularity of a human event horizon, well aware there’s no viable escape.

“Hey,” he says, unable to prevent the tremor in his voice, in his wrist. “I know what this must look like, but you’re not hallucinating.” 

Sam evaluates this older, derivative self, _Sam prime_ , and releases his left hand’s hold on Castiel’s right, to raise his fingers to reach for his other self, wrist rotated back, his palm landing atop his knuckles. He knows he’s seen things he will never see, wouldn’t want to bear witness to, deviating somewhen after leaving this walking path, and there due to the grace of god goes he.

“Can I trust him?” Sam asks, speaking into his shoulder. “Can I trust you?”

“I trust him,” he says, with gut-wrenching sincerity. “I love him, and he loves me. He loves who I was, which means he loves you.” He laughs, self-conscious. “If we’re going by the transitive property, anyway.”

Sam secures his hold on both of them, and follows the line of questioning to its logical conclusion. “Do you love yourself?”

The other Sam sighs and closes his eyes, just outside of his younger self’s peripheral vision.

Castiel’s wrecked wings descend in tandem to shield them, their humanity up for debate since six months into their shared life; he lowers his right wing all the way to wrap around the older Sam and embrace his back.

“Look, um.” He pauses, determining how to address his prior self. “Sam. We’re hoping to help you close this book before it could ever be opened for you.” 

Sam notes that the newest, oldest Sam is kneeling atop the thistle. He scans the skyline, from the Dish to the delineation of the firmament from the Californian faultlines. “So if I’m understanding this right, and I’m being directed to outright reject the divine plan, what does that entail?”

Castiel is alight, bathed in the rays of a cooler sun, backed by a symbolic stand-in for the world tree. “First we would ward you. Then, with your permission, we would wipe your memory of this discussion.”

“If you say yes to me,” says future Sam, his features shrouded by his hair and the shadow of the oak. “I promise you that you’ll wish you couldn’t remember these things. The details you and I wanted to keep close were taken from us, or... or would be, hypothetically. This is the best deal you’re going to get.” 

He flinches, hisses in pain from the presence of the abscessed absence, and present-past Sam grips him tight to prevent him from losing his balance. There’s a flutter of wings on the hillside, not near enough to be from Castiel, and the thought is gone before it’s dwelt upon.

“What is it you’re wanting?” younger Sam asks. “Specifically?”

“An intercession.” Sam prime laughs again, and breathes in through his teeth. “For you to wake up with Jess. She loves you. You could’ve been happy with her, if she hadn’t...”

Cas turns his solar gaze to his Sam in commiseration, a mirrored reflection of miserable imagery: of Sam’s baptism of fire, of demon blood on deciduous incisors and ash falling onto his infant forehead; of Mary and Jess immolated for otherworldly entertainment; of Belphegor burnt within Jack’s body.

“Go be with Jess,” Sam again urges himself. “She loves you so much. I still think about her. Hell, I still think about Brady and Luis. They love you, too, and you really don’t want to know what happens to all of them if you turn this down.”

“It’s your choice, Sam,” Castiel reminds him. “That said, he’s not wrong. Of the ways this could play out, not many options lead to an exit from this stage.”

“Okay.” Sam nods to each of them individually and sits up, rolling his shoulders beneath his hand touching his hand, at the spot he and himself intersect. “Yes. Do it. Do... whatever it is you need to, the warding and the memory wipe. I believe you both.”

Sam prime exhales relief, and he nods, too. “Cas.”

“This will burn,” he warns, as he keeps Sam’s hand held in his own, and raises his free one to stack three hands high on his shoulder.

“It’s fine,” Sam assures him, clenching his teeth.

The flash of grace leaves him seeing an afterimage of the tree’s branches ascending to the sky, and he’s sore to his bones where Enochian is emblazoned upon his scapulae, words written into what would be wings if heaven or hell ever had their way.

“You are not taking Sam Winchester,” Castiel insists, eyes closed but still glowing from beneath his eyelids, speaking to someone omnipotent. “I won’t let you.”

Sam gasps, but he’s beside himself, steadying himself, self-assured in a tangible way for once.

“You’re gonna do fine on the LSAT. Don’t worry.” Sam smiles at him, blinking more frequently than before, and it’s impossible to ascertain what’s so amusing or agonizing. “Just sleep enough and eat a good breakfast. You’ve got this.”

“Thank you. I’m... not gonna remember anything about this, huh?”

“You won’t.” Castiel keeps his right hand on his shoulder, on Sam’s hand over Sam’s, and gradually unwinds his fingers on his left hand from Sam’s right. “You’ll think you fell asleep, and there’s an argument to say that you will have done so.”

Sam nods a final time, and feels his future self lean in from the side to kiss the top of his head.

Castiel brings his left hand up to brush his bangs back from his forehead, fingertips delicate on his temple. With his thumb he traces a benediction on his brow, and Sam can tell that Cas is not breathing.

“Skedaddle,” Sam prime says, with a choked strain of humor.

All the earth is blue, and constellations emerge from the cleared cloud coverage. Dusk accelerates into a night sky more quickly than the campus beneath them could account for.

Jack steps down the hill to join them, and points upward, drawing a zigzag motion until several stars shine brighter, ticked upward in intensity as easily as adjusting a monitor.

“That’s _Lacerta_ , the lizard,” he whispers, considerate of Sam asleep on a Stanford Cardinal blanket, sheltered by the oak tree, supported by the redwood. “It’s new. Well, sort of. The name is new, at least.”

Castiel smiles at Jack and moves to stand beside and slightly behind him.

“Hevelius, yeah?” Sam whispers back, smiling too as Jack nods in confirmation. He takes his place behind Jack, at Castiel’s right. “Thought there would’ve been too much light pollution to see it out here.”

With a final glance to his resting self, Sam laces his fingers with Castiel’s, and offers his right hand out to Jack, who reaches back to hold it in the same instant that he catches Castiel’s left hand on the other side.

Jack looks over his shoulders to Cas and Sam, methodically, and elevates their joined hands.

Sam sighs and tilts his head until his skull is resting against Castiel’s.

Cas squeezes his hand and closes his eyes against Sam’s shoulder.

Jack’s irises ignite into molten ingots, and within a heartbeat, the three of them wink out of their storied existence.


End file.
